Almost Japanese Read online

  I began to keep a window log.

  Saturday.

  8:55 a.m. Akira out. Wearing sheepskin coat (gorgeous). Carrying briefcase.

  Noon: returned with case of American beer & laundry. Looks like tails.

  8:30 p.m. out. Sheepskin again. Missed return.

  11:15: all lights out.

  One night, a few weeks after my brownie visit, I decided to try and get backstage. A suitable length of time had elapsed for me not to seem over-eager but I didn’t want the brownies to wear off altogether, as it were. If he failed to recognize me, I promised myself I’d forget all about him.

  The second I walked through the backstage door I knew I’d made a dreadful mistake. I was going to make a fool of myself. I was going to trip on something, revolt him somehow. This was the wrong time to come.

  I had to find a washroom and comb my hair again, get composed. I turned to get back out before anyone saw me when, suddenly at the end of another hall, I caught a glimpse of an indigo kimono, camelia pattern, white petals across his shoulders. It was him. Akira! And someone else. Oh my god. Coming towards me. His wet face. Wet hair. I flattened myself against the wall.

  Em-mah! he cried and seized my hand, his face shining. Em-mah. You come to see me? You enjoy concert tonight? You must meet Manager. Manager, this is neigh-bah. Young girl who made me ahhh – Em-mah, what you call dis ting?

  My voice creaked. Brownies, Akira.

  Ahhh. Brrrrownies. He rolled his Rs operatically. Yes. Nice young lady, eh?

  Manager nodded.

  I could read the distaste in his mouth. He looked like José Ferrer, the scowling director in my favourite movie, Enter Laughing.

  You must want to get dressed, Akira. I’ll tell Heinz to bring your car around.

  I was in the way. A nuisance to Manager. To Akira. My heart was pounding so hard. I was sure he could hear it. I was making a fool of myself. My ridiculous feelings were written all over my face. Stupid face. Idiot me.

  Akira, I’ll say goodbye now. See you soon.

  No – wait! I drive you home, no? We ah neigh-bahs. You have time to wait for me?

  I had time, yes. I nodded. He undid my hand. He was actually asking me to wait. He remembered me. He –.

  Wasn’t that a tiny dab of sauce on Manager’s tie?

  We pulled into his driveway and he invited me in. He held open the door, waiting, and I slipped past him without touching. He handed me a glass without touching. I said something funny and he laughed, his hand rocking my shoulder but there was air between his hand and the cloth, between his skin and mine. I inhaled the scent of his hair. What was happening to me? Why me? Don’t break this glass, don’t spill something, for god’s sake. My legs are asleep. I just know I’m going to fall over if I stand up. Am I me, Emma, sitting here right now? Why do I have such a silly little nose. Oh please don’t make me have to eat something in front of him. Just move that foot a little. Ahhh.

  We finished tea, then he sagged with sudden fatigue and I shot to my feet, shook hands goodnight and flew down his steps and back home, to my room, my sanctum, to lie down and recall every last molecule of our encounter. The next few days, I sat through my classes like a zombie. Akira. Akira. Akira.

  I am walking down the magic sidewalk.

  A car pulled up beside me. Akira rolled down the window.

  Hello, Emma. You are coming home from school? Maybe you see concert tonight. Not too much homework to do, I hope? You check with your parents, okay?

  I nodded and shifted my books onto my hip. No homework, Akira. He drove off. Oh god, my skirt had been all hiked up sideways the whole time he’d been talking.

  *

  I began to go to all his concerts. He reserved complimentary tickets for me under his name at the box office. My parents asked me to thank him. They were embarrassed by such generosity. They asked me, was I making a nuisance of myself? Sometimes Akira drove us both there if I called at his house early. Often we drove back together. Or sometimes out to a restaurant to eat. He always conducted on an empty stomach.

  I worked on my hair, my posture. I tried to dress better. My schoolwork began to slide. I inhaled the scent of everything Japanese that could tell me something more about him. I stole hairs from his hairbrush, Tokyo cigarettes from the package he left on the table when he went to answer the phone. I took a restaurant drinking-glass, faintly imprinted with his lips, and kept it in my top drawer. The last minutes of every visit with him pulled themselves through my clenched fingers, bead by bead. He stood up to say goodbye one night and his cheek brushed mine.

  Monday.

  6 p.m.: Akira returned from rehearsal. Blue ski-jacket. Carrying score.

  7 p.m.: Left. Dinner?

  10:45: Lights all out.

  Everything Japanese became magic. Sheepskin coats were magic. I’d spot a car like his and my heart would jump. In the grocery store, I heard a laugh just like his and I almost died. I wanted to be like him, to feel perfect. Everything that connected to him was absolutely sacred. My daily life was so ordinary it was painful. I made notes after every encounter with Akira for fear I’d forget a detail. Sometimes other details from my ordinary life found their way in. They helped to define the days in my mind.

  Wednesday.

  Akira reads his magazines from right to left. Sometimes down the page in columns. This must make a difference. But how?

  Marjorie crashed into my locker today. Asked me did I want a blind date tomorrow. Her brother’s friend. Finally, at mid-fourteen, I have been offered a d.a.t.e. (Log, take note.) But concert tomorrow night. Told Marjorie, sorry, I had to babysit. She insisted I was suicidal to turn him down he’s in grade 13, at St. Mike’s. I’ll never get another chance. Only 27 more hours before Akira!! Maybe go backstage. Yippee. Note: Stand up straight. Borrow silk scarf from Mom.

  10 p.m.: Car in driveway.

  11:30: Lights out.

  Saturday

  It worked! I stood at the top of the street, timed it, began to stroll down the hill just when I thought he’d be coming around the corner back from rehearsal. A few false starts. Then this time, for real. He saw me before I saw him, pulled up beside me, rolled down the window (black turtleneck) and invited me back for tea. Love sitting beside him, watching his hands drive.

  Tuesday

  Was invited by Louise and Tricia (the superhip twins) to go jam-can curling. Grossed them out by turning up with skates. But they told me it was on ice!

  Akira can’t digest cheese. Too heavy, he said, patting his belly. He was brought up on soy milk, not cow’s milk. Oh, my mother said, he doesn’t have our enzymes.

  Another fact to add to my secret book of differences.

  Thursday

  Dream night. Saw A. backstage after. Face covered in sweat. Blue flowered kimono again. Looked the best! Touched my hand when introducing me to pianist! Manager insisted they go out to a bar afterwards. I had to leave. Bummer. Hate mgr. Guy knows it’s a school night plus I’m underage. Akira seemed sorry. My imag.?

  Wednesday

  No concert until Tues. Fainted in health class today. A VD film and the animation was so real I stood up and blacked out. Now everyone will think I have IT. Marj told me my eyes actually rolled back into my head. So embarrassing. My kilt flipped up too, she said. She brought my books around to the nurse’s office. Later. M. insists Seth wants to meet me. She says hang out in the schoolyard at St. Mike’s after class. But A. comes back from rehearsal 4:30-ish. Can’t tell Marj. about A. yet. Wish I wasn’t so much taller now than A.

  Saturday

  The language. He laughed when I told him my brownies tasted better than they looked. That was funny? But he completely missed my ironic jokes and when I exaggerated to be funny, he just looked blank. He laughed today when the tuba player lumbered offstage like a grizzly bear during rehearsal. He loves slapstick. I’m embarrassed. In other ways he seems so much more sophisticated than anyone I’ve ever met.

  Sunday

  2-4 p.m. Saw A. pacing to mus
ic out on his balcony. Could hear actual sound of his humming over the music. Turn fifteen next month.

  Wednesday

  A. on tour for a month. What a birthday present. Folks tried to cheer me up in time for my party. How am I going to survive. Virginia Rickler showed me the strychnine rings in her hair from the bad acid she’s taken. Claims she can date the trips from the rings. Good thing her parents are still in Brazil. Heard also that Carole Lasker’s brother flipped out and drove off Gorse Hill on his bike. They didn’t find him for hours and now they think permanent brain damage … Carole can’t stand anyone who does drugs now.

  Friday

  Chandeliers versus paper lanterns. Wallpaper, any wallpaper, versus shoji screens. Coffee versus green tea. Black oxfords versus zoris. A Victorian chesterfield, for god’s sake, versus floor cushions. Steak-and-kidney pie versus sushi. We westerners wear our hair in frizzy balls, stick our arms into tight sleeves that catch rings of perspiration, clump and glop our way across the outdoors, couldn’t tell you three things about the changing seasons, use up entire rooms with four-poster beds. It takes us two miles to turn around. We have amnesia too. Japanese household traditions date back hundreds of years. I can’t remember what day Hallowe’en falls on or trace anything through our European hodge podge. I couldn’t memorize a recipe to save my life.

  Friday

  Formal is coming. Gaahhh. Can’t duck out. A. on tour again helps. Marj & Lynn insist on total mutual makeovers. Glad I finally told them about A. Hated lying, complications etc. They think I should try and meet boys, somebody, anybody, in time for formal. Why should I? Am I normal? Dear log, am I normal?

  Saturday

  Noon: A. leaves house.

  2 p.m.: Returns. A. got haircut!! (Find out where)

  5:30: Leaves. Carrying laundry. Glimpse of red turtleneck.

  – missed return.

  11:45: lights out.

  Wednesday

  Manners. Oh, manners. Akira eats noisily, talks with his mouth full, drops food from his chopsticks into the sauce. But in the car today he sneezed and apologized, embarrassed as though he’d farted. On most occasions his attentiveness to other people is so much subtler than mine, I feel ashamed – thinking of how ‘my people’ clump around with their boots on in the house, sit in dirty bathwater, wear streetclothes until bedtime, interrupt one another, drag a tree into the house or hack a face out of a pumpkin to celebrate a season, saw our meat up and stab it, laugh haw haw haw. We’re cowhands!

  They don’t call it the other side of the world for nothing. In Japan, everything must be different.

  Makeover a total failure. Tried wearing the headband home after school today. People actually snickered. God I hate people my age. M. took me aside, told me my forehead too low for a headband. Looks goofy with my uniform. Formal is getting closer. A total put-through! I hate every speck of my life except A.

  11 p.m. kitchen light goes out.

  Tuesday

  The Japanese probably have to recycle much more than we do. Every object is precious, hard to replace. Food is arranged in individual bitefuls – not like the pails of carrots, mashed potatoes and turkey I turned out into serving bowls last night and scraped later into a heap of bones and sludge that was lugged out to the street in a plastic bag. Our backyard is a shaggy-edged bowl of shade slashed with the fountain scar, old bicycle parts and snow tires.

  Friday

  Blind date’s car comes in twenty minutes. So nervous. I am not right for this dress it’s way too weird across the boobs I told Marj it was ridic. Why does she bully me. These shoes put me over six feet. God almighty. Why couldn’t I go in my kimono? With A. Wish it was next week and he was home. Wish I was Maria Callas. Uh oh. Doorbell. Glad A. can’t see me looking like this. I kiss your picture Akira. Quick, give me courage.

  Saturday

  Seth. At first he wouldn’t talk. I hate shrimp cocktail. In those tricky little glasses I knew I’d spill mine. Lucky my skirt was black. The cummerbund (like Akira’s) is ruined though. No one else was wearing blouses and skirts, just backless, strapless. Hair up in buns, pierced ears. I couldn’t find heels in size eleven. I looked like a baby, nothing to push up, pink lipstick and everyone else wearing red. Seth danced so close I could feel everything and they must have had liquor in the washroom how else could he have gotten so drunk. In the parking lot I had to hold his tails back so he could barf. Then he tried to French-kiss me. Marj says give him another chance. I told her she’s on probation setting me up like that.

  Monday

  Japanese objects all seem to be made as small as possible, easily taken apart and put away. I love the idea of growing miniature trees, raking gravel into patterns, pushing six square feet of dirt into a dream garden.

  Turned fifteen today. Akira is thirty-seven. I am still growing. We stood back to back and looked in the mirror. I positively tower over him now. We both burst out laughing. Actually Akira doesn’t laugh. He only smiles open-mouthed and very occasionally makes a kind of ha noise. Only one.

  Fifteen. Still no blood. In a class by myself. That’s it, I thought. I’m barren. A tiny thrill ofhope. No blood ever.

  My parents were getting irritated with my infatuation. I should be dating boys, they protested, while I sawed the legs off my bed and my dresser and took to eating on the floor. I drank milk from a sake carafe, ate Christmas dinner with chopsticks, spent my clothing allowance on Japanese language records, imitated Akira’s voice, walked like him, conducted like him in the mirror. He brought me back a summer cotton kimono from Tokyo which I wore bunched up under my uniform. My mother discovered my shrine of keepsakes. Disgusted, she flushed his hair down the toilet and washed out the drinking-glass. I flew into a rage and cried for two days. I hid the cigarettes, the ticket stubs, the dressing-room towel he’d wiped his face on. My father used a Japanese accent to get my attention and howled on all fours when I put on my Kabuki record.

  Akira asked me about school and tried to recall what fifteen had been like for him. We stood back-to-back. I pressed down his hair. He pressed his spine against mine. We touched together, from the shoulder blades down to our heels. I was three and a half inches taller than him now. He made a joke – he was shrinking! He told me everything about himself. His English was never a problem. The heat he produced in me could have fogged film, yet it was uninformed, inert. I discuss everything with Emma, – Akira said proudly to Manager – except sex. Our love is special.

  First Blood. Suddenly when I stood up. Blood on my kilt, on my chair, in my sock.

  I turned sixteen looking at myself sideways in the mirror. I still screamed androgyny.

  Our glasses clinked and Akira tousled my hair. Called himself an old man. I protested – no! – but he laughed and looked away.

  He lifted his cup. This is Buddha. He touched the table. This is Buddha. Everything has Buddha nature inside. We believe God is not up there, he pointed. But here. He touched his nose.

  We believe. I shivered. So much separated us.

  *

  I knew she was going to get me. I could just feel it in my bones, even before I walked into the gym. I felt conspicuous. It was time. She’d ignored me for almost a month. She was clairvoyant. She’d know I was thinking these thoughts. She’d get me for sure.

  I rolled back the elastic on the legs of my bloomers. It was so tight it cut off the circulation in my legs. I hated how I looked in them. Other girls looked so much better ...

  Emma! Over here.

  I walked over to her.

  Unroll that elastic. You look ridiculous.

  I did as I was told.

  What are we supposed to be doing today? Handstands.

  What?

  Handstands, Miss Pike.

  Show me.

  I threw my hands down and jumped up. Not high enough. I bucked again. Not high enough.

  And what do you call those?

  Silence. She couldn’t get me if I was silent.

  Class! Gather around.

  Filt
hy bitch. She was Stalag Nine. She was Helga the She-wolf. I wanted to rip out her tongue.

  Emma. Get up and DO IT PROPERLY!

  I admit it. I was a total coward, afraid of crashing, breaking my spine and spending the rest of my life in a wheelchair.

  I bucked again. The change cascaded out of my shirt pocket.

  What in heaven’s name is that?

  Akira’s photo. Ohmygod. I’d forgotten. There was his face, inches from my own, in full view of everyone, baton raised in hand. Shitshitshit. Akira. Get out of here.

  I focused on his face, threw my hands down again, heaved my hips up over my head, straightened my back and wobbled there, for a few seconds, the blood pounding behind my eyes. Akira. Save us. Get us out of this.

  The whistle blew.

  Again!

  I heaved myself up once again, managed to straighten my back without going over, pointed my toes the way I was supposed to, hung there, squashing the grit into my palms, my shirt, untucked now and sliding up my chest. Oh god, now they’ll see I don’t wear a bra.

  She blew the whistle. I came down.

  Onto my own hands. I don’t know how it happened but those were my running shoes all right with my fingers sticking out underneath them and I couldn’t pull out, or lift off or step back. I just squatted on top of myself, my eyes fuzzing over. It seemed ages until I solved it suddenly, crashed down onto my side and popped my hands out, all purple with tread-marks and then, with a jerk, I got up again, almost blacked out doing it so fast, started stuffing my shirt back in and gathering up my change and Akira’s photo, afraid to look at Pike for fear the look on my face would show her how much I – IMPUDENCE, she’d bellow at me – but she didn’t. She flashed me a little smile instead, much more disturbing, and lurched away.